


rage against the dying of the light

by SerenePanic



Series: the elder brother's life all laced in with the other's [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 22:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9405518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenePanic/pseuds/SerenePanic
Summary: Keith, post Kerberos.(He does not grieve.)(He rages.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night."
> 
> Written after watching s2, so....tread with caution? Mostly just the last few sentences. (Irony, ha!)

Shiro’s gone.

Shiro’s _gone_ , and everybody is just going about their day, like their worlds haven’t been _turned upside down_ and completely _shattered_.

(That’s because they haven’t. It’s just yours that’s gone.)

_Pilot error_ , they said. _Pilot error_ , like hell. This is _Shiro_ , for the love of _God_. Shiro wouldn’t just... He wouldn’t. Fuck, he couldn’t! Shiro is— _was—_ the best pilot the Garrison had. Something must have happened, and the Garrison is lying to cover it up. They had to be.

(You refuse to accept a reality where Shiro is dead because he couldn’t fly well enough. That’s anathema to your very being, to everything you have ever known to be true.)

God, let this be a bad dream.

(Your brother can’t be gone. He just can’t.)

It’s not a bad dream. It’s reality. And it’s not just Shiro—it’s both the Holts, too, who had been on the mission with him. And not a goddamned day goes by without hearing about how it was _Shiro’s fault the Holts are both dead_ , how _Shiro ripped apart that family_ , how _at least he died with them, instead of leaving them to die on their own_.

(You’re so angry you can’t breathe. _What about_ my _family_ , you want to scream. _What about the other family who was destroyed? What about me,_ you don’t say.)

The other students don’t seem to realize that the two of you even knew each other. Only the staff knows you are— _were_ —brothers, and even then none of them seem to care.

(If you hear how Shiro failed one more time, you might just break someone’s nose.)

How is it that with your world so shattered, everyone else seems just fine? There’s the obligatory grieving period. There’s the memorial service, and Shiro’s parents come. It’s quiet, and everyone wears black, and you sit in the back with your classmates, listening to them fidget and wait for this all to be over.

(His parents wanted you to sit with them, but you couldn’t bear to sit there without him. Couldn’t bear to see them go through the motions with you, to see how they could still look at you after their son d i e d and you were left to pick up the pieces, to be the replacement son.)

His parents leave, and you didn’t go to see them when they asked for you. Instead, you snuck into the gym, and hit the punching bag until the knuckles you didn’t wrap bled.

(It doesn’t help any.)

Everything goes back to normal, or so they say. Classes resume, and eventually the whispers stop, and you just get angrier and angrier. You start getting in fights, and getting disciplined, and getting into more fights.

(Without the fear of Shiro’s patented look of disappointment and concern when you start acting out, what’s the use in behaving?)

They kick you out.

(They _killed_ Shiro. You don’t want to be associated with them anyway.)

They tell you to sit still and wait for your guardians to come pick you up, like you could bear to face Shiro’s parents after everything you’ve done. _Ha._

(You take off the moment you can.)

Now you have nowhere to go, and you’re still impossibly angry. You haven’t let yourself grieve, not really. What good would it do? He’d still be gone, and you’d still be here.

( _Fuck._ )

You find a shack, in the middle of the desert. Who knows why it’s there, but it’s clearly abandoned, and there’s no one for miles around to have any expectations for you. It’s empty, and quiet, and there’s just you and your thoughts, and your inescapable anger.

(Day in, day out, that’s your constant. It used to be your older brother, but he’s _not fucking here anymore_ so it doesn’t matter what it used to be.)

Some days, you aren’t so angry, and you can go outside for the sunrise and appreciate the gold tones that streak across the sky, and the simple beauty of the desert. But most days? Most days, you run until you collapse, and then you get up and practice throwing that knife that you’ve had all your life, because throwing sharp, pointy things feels like the only control you have over anything anymore.

(If Shiro were here, he’d be frantic with worry for you, but that’s a non-issue, now, isn’t it?)

After a month of nothing but angry days and grief-stricken, black-hole abyss nights, you start to notice the paintings in the caves. The first time you think _conspiracy_ , you realize what you’ve done almost instantly, and run for the rest of the day, until you can’t possibly think anymore.

(It’s not fair that you should have to learn to enjoy the things you used to love, not when you mainly loved them to piss off someone who doesn’t exist anymore.)

Eventually, you settle. You’re still angry—it bubbles under your skin, barely kept under, always just under the surface—but it no longer consumes your entire focus, and you really start to notice just how strange this desert is. The cave paintings, everything that points towards this….blue lion.

(You refuse to think about how you’ve ignored dealing with your dark mass of grief in your chest in favor of obsessively searching for clues about the blue lion.)

And then one day, a ship crashes not from the Garrison, and you have a feeling about it. You set off the distractions, ignoring the way the explosions (still) feel like each heartbeat.

(Holy fuck.)

Your world is righted, again.

(Holy _fuck_.)

Not even the gaggle of hangers-on can really diminish your disbelief. Who cares if you’re going over a cliff with a too heavy load? Shiro’s alive!

(Shiro’s _alive_ , and you don’t know if you can breathe. Somewhere along the lines, you got used to rage instead of oxygen, and now it seems like your lungs are unprepared for anything else.)

Shiro wakes up the next morning, and he doesn’t say anything about the shack, or the fact that you’re alone, or your dark bags or your close-bitten nails or any of the thousand other things that, before the Garrison, before Kerberos, would have instantly put Shiro on alert that something was definitely, seriously wrong.

(It’s okay. Shiro’s got his own stuff to deal with, and you’ve been alone for the past year. Your issues aren’t as serious as his, and for once in his life, Shiro needs to put himself first.)

Shiro is so weary. He seems so much older than he ever as before, and as you stand there and explain what you’ve been doing, you notice how different he is. How serious he’s become. You don’t think you know him, not really.

(You’re still angry, but now it has direction. You _hate_ the Galra for what they’ve done to your brother.)

(Shiro can never find out how angry you still are. You can’t take being even more of a disappointment to him.)

(You will never forgive the Galra.)

 


End file.
